Earlier this month, Kerry Washington tweeted a video about dirty diapers to her 4.6 million followers.

The minute-long clip featured the Scandal star and mom of two talking not about her infant son, but about the fact that too many parents can't afford diapers and have to choose between them and other essentials like food and medicine.

Washington is just one of several famous moms using her star power to tackle a problem commonly referred to as "diaper need" or the "diaper gap." A small army of celebs, including Jennifer Garner, Molly Sims, Kate Hudson, Jessica Alba, Kelly Rowland, Drew Barrymore, and Jenna Dewan Tatum, have rallied around the cause through a Los Angeles-based organization called Baby2Baby.

The nonprofit collects and distributes millions of disposable diapers to low-income families and donates essential items like clothes, cribs, and hygiene products for children up to age 12. It also serves as an umbrella organization to support likeminded nonprofits around the country trying to ramp up their collection and donation efforts.

The cost of diapers disproportionately affects low-income parents because, unlike so-called essential items such as medicine, diapers are subject to sales tax in most states, including California. Families also can't use their food stamps or WIC benefits to pay for diapers because both are nutrition-based programs. And low-income parents often can't afford memberships to shop in bulk at Costco or Sam's Club and may end up paying double what some higher-income families pay for diapers.

"It does put a little fire in your belly. It makes me want to do anything and everything [to help]."

One estimate puts the annual cost of diapers for low-income families at $936 per child, or 6 percent of a mother's gross pay if she works full-time for the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.

A study published in Pediatrics, in 2013, found that nearly a third of the moms surveyed couldn't afford diapers and, to make ends meet, 8 percent of them stretch their supply. That can include not changing a baby as frequently or drying out a soiled diaper in order to reuse it.

Baby2Baby's co-presidents, Kelly Sawyer Patricof and Norah Weinstein, often repeat that sobering statistic to drive home their point. But they do more than just rattle off talking points. Instead, they bring such anecdotes to life by encouraging celebrity supporters to meet and form relationships with low-income children, their parents, and the social workers trying to help thousands of families. The nonprofit also invites celebrities to the playdates it hosts for children, who typically leave with a bundle of sponsor-donated items, like clothing, books, blankets, and toys.

"It does put a little fire in your belly," says Sims, describing her reaction to those intimate experiences. "It makes me want to do anything and everything [to help]."

Since getting involved with Baby2Baby six years ago, Sims has been a vocal champion for the cause. She's appeared on the daytime talkshow The Real to talk about the diaper gap, attended and hosted playdates with children, and, most recently, curated a Mother's Day gift guide on eBay for Charity that benefited Baby2Baby.

"How do they get everyone so involved and stay involved?" Sims says of Baby2Baby. "It’s because I’m seeing it. I’m talking to the social workers. I’m seeing these families at Christmas, Easter. You just can't not do anything."

In 2016, Baby2Baby served 125,000 children in Los Angeles, a 25 percent increase from the prior year. It handed out 11.8 million items last year, five million of which were diapers. That nearly doubled the number of items Baby2Baby distributed in 2015. Most of these items come from corporate partners like The Honest Company, Huggies, Tiny Prints, and Paul Mitchell.

Dora Casillas, a counselor who has worked for the Los Angeles Unified School District for the past 13 years, says she's watched Baby2Baby grow rapidly in the past five years. She's in constant touch with the organization about her elementary school students' needs and what donations are available.

Kerry Washington at a Baby2Baby playdate.

Image: Stacie McChesney

When she attended a playdate with her students, she took note of how the celebrities were eager to interact with the children. At a recent board meeting where Casillas gave a presentation, the famous women sitting around the table "seemed so humble" and asked questions about how the families were benefiting from the organization's donations.

"They're mothers themselves, they have big hearts and really do care about providing that help and assistance to other mothers," she says.

"They have big hearts and really do care about providing that help and assistance to other mothers."

Of course, non-famous women and mothers have worked to increase awareness for decades. The first diaper bank opened in Arizona in 1994 to collect diapers for a local crisis nursery. Since then, more than 320 organizations have launched similar efforts to help provide families with diapers.

As the welfare rolls shrank nationwide and fewer families received cash assistance, more parents had to make hard choices between essentials like food, medicine, and diapers, says Alison Weir, chief of policy, research, and analysis at the National Diaper Bank Network, a nonprofit organization that raises awareness about the issue and helps local diaper banks grow.

That need may become more urgent in the coming months and years as the federal government and states slash safety net programs like Medicaid and food stamps. President Trump's 2018 budget proposes cutting nutritional assistance by $193 billion and Medicaid by $800 billion over the next decade.

"You're going to have a lot more people, if these proposed cuts go into effect, who will need diapers," Weir says.

A post shared by kristen bell (@kristenanniebell) on May 6, 2017 at 5:41pm PDT

While organizations like Baby2Baby, which is part of the National Diaper Bank Network, can't turn back the clock or change welfare, they can pressure politicians to reconsider taxing diapers, among other policy objectives. Weinstein has previously testified in the California legislature to support two separate bills that would eliminate the tax and provide a $50 voucher that parents in the state's welfare-to-work program can use for diaper products.

This kind of policy work doesn't regularly make the front pages. But a celebrity mom with four million Twitter followers or a company that sells diapers and hygiene products can raise awareness and help tackle the problem in different ways. (The Honest Company, founded by Jessica Alba, has been a corporate partner of Baby2Baby since 2011.)

"We know how passionate they are, and how busy they are," Weinstein says. "We’re very straightforward about what we need from them, about when a social media post, an [event] attendance, or a donation [would help]. We’re very careful about what we think matters and what they should spend their time doing."

Few nonprofits have such ready access to women who frequently grace the covers of People, Us Weekly, Vogue, and InStyle. But Baby2Baby's appeal, aside from a being an important, overlooked cause, may be that it offers celebrities a meaningful way to give back that happens to align with their personal branding. Several of the organization's supporters, including Sims, Alba, Barrymore, and Rachel Zoe, have lifestyle products or content that targets women and mothers.

That also means there's a clear entrepreneurial spirit at the organization's board meetings, says Sims, who emphasizes that the focus isn't on "who's in a movie, who's in a TV show, who's starting out."

And sometimes those brainstorms can get emotionally intense. At the most recent meeting in April, which convened board members and "angel supporters" like Sims and the actresses Julie Bowen, Michelle Monaghan, and Busy Phillips, Dora Casillas began sharing a story about a young boy whose only clothes were stolen from a laundromat.

It didn't take long for women in the room to tear up. Casillas had already told Patricof and Weinstein about the incident, and they'd begun assembling a customized "bundle" for the boy that included clothes, a jacket, shoes, underwear, socks, and toys.

"I think you walk away being like, 'We can do this, game on.'"

"He was so happy," she says.

Casillas says that all Baby2Baby donations make a big difference in her clients' lives, but the diapers tend to prompt a unique reaction: "They're very expensive. It's something when you do have infants, you pretty much need."

Meeting the challenge of providing for those families is what keeps Sims committed to Baby2Baby.

"I think you walk away being like, 'We can do this, game on,'" she says. "I love that. I don’t walk away from many charities thinking to myself I gotta do more."

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